Reviews and News about British, European and Translated crime fiction, tv and film.

Saturday, November 05, 2011

The Redeemed - Cover Opinions

This week's selection for "cover opinions" is the US, Canadian and UK covers for M R Hall'sThe Redeemed which is about to come out in UK paperback with a new look for the series. The fourth book in the series, The Flight, (Feb 2012) has a similar feel to below.

So what are your thoughts on the US (LHS), Canadian (RHS), UK (HB & pb below) covers? Which would entice you to pick the book up if you were not familiar with the books of M R Hall?

7 comments:

I don't like the Canadian cover. It looks a bit like all those sub-Da Vinco Code books that are out there. I like the UK hardback but as I haven't read the author I can't say if this reflects the writing. It makes me want to buy the book though which is the point really i suppose

I suppose the UK and Canadian hardbacks are more true to the book (presuming they depict the modern-day church that is centre for much of the action). The US hardback is just current fashion/cliche - stone angels - rather last year actually! - I can't remember any angels in the book. The UK paperback is more sensationalist so I presume the idea is to sell more copies (as the HB would mostly be bought by libraries where sales aren't influenced by covers?).I don't think any of the covers makes a serious attempt to illustrate the story, though, they are all just "stock images that you see all the time on crime books". Maybe a pic of the coroner would have been good, as she's the main series character.

Just noticed that I assume the woman in the knife in the UK pb is supposed to be Jenny the coroner, so I take back my last sentence above, though it couldn't be more "generic woman-like", you'd never guess she's supposed to be a coroner!

I am very undecided which one i prefer. As an illustrator of book jackets there are none that i think WOW i wish i had designed that, they all look very generic as if they have been designed by the marketing exec. The type on the UK PB version reads as 'RED MED' when i first looked, did anyone else see that?